Popular reviews

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  Review by Lucy ★★★ 6

  ryan gosling: [has 4 lines the entire movie]
  me: now THIS is acting!

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  Review by k(arst)en ★★½ 4

  'Only God Forgives' is a bad movie disguised as a good one.

  This is a movie where I feel like your level of enjoyment depends entirely on how you approach it. Some people go into it wanting a surreal visual experience, others want a compelling story, others want cool fights and blood. The issue with this film is that it can't make up it's damn mind with what it wants to do.

  When it focuses entirely on being an *experience*, I love it. But then it slips into a scene where I'm supposed to, like.....care? Which is not what this movie does best. And then 2 minutes later some dudes gets an arm cut off and it's not surprising or exciting at all. Despite all of this I still managed to stay engaged which I suppose is worth praise.

  Just wish it picked a thing it wanted to be and stuck with it.

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  Review by russman ★½ 1

  God should reconsider his stance on forgiveness

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 3

  Refn directing his extreme fetish, karaoke Lynch exploitation movie about masochistic mama's boys and how hands are sorta like penis's that can do violence as if it's some sort of Shakespearean tableaux... Absolute king shit... Film bro 2021 continues.

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  Review by iana ★★

  ryan gosling was born to be bathed in neon light

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  Review by YI JIAN ★★★★½ 13

  Only God Forgives is a painting. Paintings don't move. Paintings don't talk. Paintings exhibit colours. Red. Pink. Blue. Gold. Yellow. Refn used warm colours to create serenity, then used serenity to contrast violence; soothing music to contrast gore.

  Refn doesn't just stumble his way through a film like some directors do, he's professional and he knows what he wants before the script was even written. In any given moment, colours uniformly fill the entire scene, Cliff Martinez's foreboding score plays softly in the background. The film is a slideshow, frames after frames after frames of paintings. Refn paints with a camera, with lighting, with sound, with bruises, splatters of blood, sexual images, clicking of shoes.

  Every stare is too long.…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★½ 10

  84/100

  Aching, rustling NWR™ trash engulfed in pitch black spaces and sizzling neon. The viewer follows the story of Julien - his presence molded from silence, outspoken in violence - but Mai is the vivid, bleeding heart; daring to stare into the dismissive gaze of Crystal instead of keeping her eyes closed. So much of Refn's film is the product of being aroused, the act of seeing versus clamped eyelids, sexual freedom versus intentional/forced repression. Gaudy clubs, glittering hallways still lead to fatal outbursts, confronted by justice whether they were initiated by vengeance or not. Only God Forgives is an outcry to many, a torturous, impenetrable, unknown provocation, but I find a lot more than visceral horrors within its corridors. "Cause she's my mother." croons Julian; the ultimate defense. Maternal love turned slinky and smooth, hugs transformed into sensuous greetings. Despite its supposed lack of dialogue, nothing is left unsaid.

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  Review by Caitlin ★★★ 2

  when will Ryan scream at ME to take MY dress off :'(

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 1

  I liked this even more on a second viewing. The suffocating symmetry. The verging-on-comic portent. The flattened-out humid-hot glow of color so saturated it nearly bleeds. Exultant in such clinical and grisly violence. These things to me are features, not bugs, and the insistent denial of release only allows it to persist, like a drone, in my brain, and I'd feel like a fool to not bask in its wanton, stupid idiosyncrasy.

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  Review by kayla ★★ 2

  Obviously the colors were cool and it was shot really nice but I sadly didn’t care about a single thing going on in the story or any of the characters. Always nice to look at Ryan Gosling though, and the poster is so sick.

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  Review by Peaceful Stoner ★★★★★ 99

  I lived in a World. A World eternally bathed in Neon. A World showered by Sunshine as rarely as a snowfall in the Sahara. A World so brutal that not a droplet of humanity is sustained. A World where even a Mother is evil, perverse, sadistic and blood thirsty. A World where a Son is castrated by his Mother’s words yet is still bound to her love. A World where a Son can appease his Mother only after her Death. A World where a Son wonders how gifted he would have been if he had never been born, had stayed inside his Mother’s womb and died therein. A World where there is absolutely no remorse. A World which deserves to…

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  Review by Evan ★★★★ 6

  Only God will forgive me for not liking this film my first time around